Can you actually benefit from Iberia’s ‘2,500 Avios for enrolling your kids’ bonus?

I posted a few days ago about the Iberia Plus offer of 2,500 Avios points for your kids if you enrol them in the new ‘Iberia Plus Kids’ programme for 2 to 11 year olds. 

At the time, most people including myself thought that you could sign up your children and then move the Iberia Plus Avios across to a BA Household Account including the same child.

It seems, though, that some parts of this plan will not work in practice.  This is because of the, frankly, odd T&C’s of the Combine My Avios function used by Iberia, BAEC and avios.com.

Here is the key rule :

3. Members of a Household Account under the Programmes may not use ‘Combine my Avios’ other than (a) from a British Airways Executive Club Household Account to an individual account under the Avios Programme or the Iberia Plus Programme and (b) from the individual account under the Avios Programme to a Household Account under the British Airways Executive Programme. Any other Household account transaction will not be permitted under Combine my Avios.

(I genuinely have no idea why Iberia Plus members cannot transfer their Avios to a British Airways Household Account.  But the ‘why?’ part of all this is a question for another day!)

You then end up with this train of logic:

• A child cannot have an avios.com account so you cannot move their Iberia Plus Avios to avios.com
• A child cannot have a standalone British Airways Executive Club account.  The child must be part of a Household Account.
• However, as per rule 3. above, you cannot transfer INTO BAEC from Iberia Plus if you are in a BA Household Account.
• Inter alia, there is no way of combining the 2,500 Iberia Plus Avios with your existing BA Avios.

All is not totally lost.  You CAN transfer FROM a BA Household Account to Iberia Plus (see rule 3 again).  You could therefore move just enough Avios from your childs BAEC account into the new Iberia Plus Kids account to get to enough for a redemption, and then empty the account out.

However …. the IB account would still need to be 90 days old before it would accept a transfer in.  The account must also be ‘active’ (see rule 2 of the full rules) which means in theory it has had a proper transactions (flight, car hire, hotel stay etc) go through it, although it would be odd if this applied to a childs account and in any event the 2,500 Avios bonus may count as ‘activity’ anyway.

All a lot of bother, though.  I haven’t posted the form yet for my kids and I may not now.

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How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (April 2024)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Avios points from UK credit cards.  Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses!

In February 2022, Barclaycard launched two exciting new Barclaycard Avios Mastercard cards with a bonus of up to 25,000 Avios. You can apply here.

You qualify for the bonus on these cards even if you have a British Airways American Express card:

There are two official British Airways American Express cards with attractive sign-up bonuses:

You can also get generous sign-up bonuses by applying for American Express cards which earn Membership Rewards points. These points convert at 1:1 into Avios.

Run your own business?

We recommend Capital on Tap for limited companies. You earn 1 Avios per £1 which is impressive for a Visa card, along with a sign-up bonus worth 10,500 Avios.

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 12th May 2024, the Capital on Tap Business Rewards Visa card is offering a bonus of 30,000 points, convertible into 30,000 Avios. You must have a Limited Company to apply. Click here to learn more and click here to apply.

You should also consider the British Airways Accelerating Business credit card. This is open to sole traders as well as limited companies and has a 30,000 Avios sign-up bonus.

There are also generous bonuses on the two American Express Business cards, with the points converting at 1:1 into Avios. These cards are open to sole traders as well as limited companies.

Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Avios. This includes both personal and small business cards.